My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Ink

"Where did you last have it?" I said through the gap in the door.

"In my coat. Behind the button. Where I've had it all week."

"And now?"

"Now it isn't." He held up the coat with its pockets hanging out like tongues. "I've taken 5C apart. I've looked in the hearth book. I've looked in the stove."

"Why would it be in the stove?"

"I don't know," said Malphas. "I was desperate."

Opal snorted behind the door.

I sat up on the couch with the quilt around me.

I looked at the three hounds lined up behind him in the hall.

Knot looked at the ceiling. Docket looked at the floor.

Biscuit looked at me, and his tail went slowly back and forth, guilty as sin.

"Mal," I said. "Check Biscuit's bed."

He turned around and looked at the runt.

The runt lay down flat on the hall carpet and put his paws over his nose.

Malphas went upstairs at a speed no human could have managed.

Five minutes later he was back at Opal's door, out of breath.

"Two of my socks," he said. "Lacey's claw clip. The remote control. Opal's good scissors."

"I've been looking for those since March," said Opal.

"And the pen."

He held it up in the gap in the door.

Good, plain, blue, without a crack in it.

"Can I see you now?" he said.

"No," said Opal and Lacey, together. Lacey was on the stairs by then, in curlers.

Opal shut the door in the groom's face.

At four o'clock on the fifteenth of May, I got married on the roof of the Larkspur.

The sun was warm and low over the Eastside.

The new planters were full of tomatoes, still green, and the string lights were on even though it was daylight, because the boy from 4D insisted they stay lit.

Every tenant in the building was there, in their good clothes, on folding chairs and buckets.

The young mother from courtroom two was in the front row with her kids. The night nurse's son sat beside her in his new baseball glove, in case of foul balls.

The broker stood at the back by the green railing he'd painted.

The three hounds sat in a row by the bench in black velvet bow ties Opal had sewn for them.

Malphas stood at the end of the aisle in a black suit and a white shirt, with no tie, because he'd told Opal ties were a noose with manners.

The judge from housing court stood beside him with a little black book.

He'd asked to do it. He'd called the clinic himself, in March, and asked Lacey if the owner would allow it.

Opal walked me up the stairs from the second floor in her good cardigan, with her arm through mine.

She was eighty years old and she climbed every step without stopping.

At the top, she straightened my sleeves.

"Thirty buttons," she whispered. "Make him earn every one."

Then she walked me down the aisle between the tomato buckets.

The two old men played the right song for once. They'd practiced.

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